


Slices Through the Heart

by Diminua



Series: Slices Through the Heart [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Actually he's still Crawly at this point., Character Study, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 14:50:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20098978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diminua/pseuds/Diminua
Summary: He never got much in the way of answers when he was an angel, so he certainly doesn’t expect them now he’s a demon.





	Slices Through the Heart

Crawly finds the unicorn on higher ground, more sensible than people. It should, by rights, be scared of him, but it just makes a whinnying sound like a greeting and puts its head back down to crop the thin grass round the bottom of a thin, twisted tree that does nothing to keep the rain off. Crawly’s robes are already spattered to the knee with the red mud the dust becomes when water wets it, long red hair plastered down with the weight, clinging the length of his skull, curls unravelled and rats-tailed. 

‘Come on, you.’ He says to the unicorn, ridiculously, conjuring up a handful of oats. ‘Let’s get out of this.’

The creature thinks for a moment before accepting the food, before following him. It’s not tame – they’re not like horses or dogs or donkeys, which let themselves be harnessed and tethered and made useful – and this one is easily clever enough to understand what all that ark business was about and decide it wanted nothing to do with it.

Maybe that’s what they have in common.

Something shimmers in the air before the demon, sending the raindrops sizzling and scattering, and as he steps through, the unicorn follows.

In cosmic terms they haven’t gone far at all. They don’t need to.

_I don’t believe the almighty is upset with the Chinese,_ Aziraphale had said.

This isn’t China. Certainly not the parts Crawly has been to – all lush greens and wide blue lakes. Here everything is dry – absurdly dry, the sun more an attack than a benediction – in shades of ochre and dust.

Here, in contrast to the place he just left, the sun is just coming up. He turns his face towards it, to the east, and wonders if Aziraphale is still standing in the rain. He’d insisted someone should _bear witness_, although it looked more like making himself feel guilty and miserable to Crawly.

‘I don’t understand you.’ He tells the sky. ‘Bad enough that they suffer. Why make him watch as well? Do you _want_ him to fall?’ 

He never got much in the way of answers when he was an angel, so he certainly doesn’t expect them now he’s a demon. It’s just a habit. The humans put rituals around it, libations of wine, petitions in the form of scribbles on pottery, or they light candles and kneel and put their hands together and pray for grace, hoping that someone is listening.

Crawly just asks questions, shrugs and walks on. Aziraphale would tell him it’s ineffable, no doubt.

The unicorn follows, smart enough to recognise that the demon is a source of food, a handful of oats, little patches of oasis with water and bushes to shade under, made for his own comfort (and if migrating animals and later humans find them and make use of them, that’s not Crawly’s department is it? No-one expects a demon to clean up after himself).

It’s quiet here, but not silent. Things live in the shelter of rocks, the shaded hollows. Insects buzz about, occasional birds sandbathe and flirt their wings and fly off again. Lizards scuttle or stand still, soaking up the sun as it strengthens. The warmth seeps through Crawly’s robes.

He never changes course from the east, ending each day with his human body tired, falling down beneath the stars, and looking up. He remembers, or relearns, that he loves the stars. The great sweep of them in the sky.

The unicorn settles close by. Sometimes it lies down, sleeping presumably, but never for very long. Crawly has no idea if this is normal for the species, but it seems healthy enough. It lets him sit back against it’s flank while it’s sleeping, soaking up the heat as it seeps out of the landscape. It takes food delicately from his palm, or laps at the water he conjures up. Perhaps it thinks he knows where he’s going, or perhaps they don’t think like that, long term, beyond tomorrow, like humans and demons and angels do.

Out here, without the buzz of human voices, the stars feel terribly far away and close enough to touch at the same time. Or perhaps it’s that he feels so small and yet so infinite, uncontained within his slowly freckling skin. He stretches out his wings to wrap around himself for warmth, darkness on darkness, blotting out the stars. The softness of the feathers is uneasy comfort.

Do all demons still have wings? He’s never asked. Had got in the habit of hiding the burnt and twisted things early on, and kept them hidden as they grew back black and glossy, uncertain if he should be ashamed to have them still. Only with the angel, who of course still had his own magnificent sweep of white wings, had it seemed.. right.

And what had that meant? He wonders now, as he didn’t then. Head nodding drowsily, the stillness and emptiness making his own, odd disconnected thoughts loud enough for him to hear. Had he wanted the angel to see something other than the snake? The demon that he was.

But if not a demon, would he be an angel again. Trusting the ineffable plan. Letting them all drown?

‘But I never..’ he says aloud, and the thought is small, and his voice is low, and yet the conviction is unshakable. ‘I never did trust. I always asked. I always wanted to know.’

And there it is, like a dark pearl in his hand, formed around who he is now, which is who he was and who he will be. The knowledge of why he fell.

He wakes, confused to have slept (he has rested the body before, but never slept) and stretches out his wings before tucking them away. Feeds and waters the unicorn and makes the experiment of clambering onto its back. It’s surprisingly tolerant.

In fact, he suspects it of finding the whole thing quite amusing, and curses it roundly when he slithers off the other side.

‘Alright then.’ He says when he finally manages to find his seat, and the creature turns in the direction they walked yesterday, and the day before and the day before that, and trots easily.

It’s quite exhilarating really. It shouldn’t be. He’s not even that much higher or going more than twice his own long-legged pace, but there’s a rhythm and a smoothness to it. He’s more aware of this body he has, the rhythm of that too, the breathing that it seems to get on with all by itself even though he doesn’t really need it, the feel of the breeze on his skin, fluttering the hem of his robe against his bare thigh. The taste of cool water that he drinks just for the feel of it on his tongue and against his hot, damp forehead. Sand between his toes as he dismounts.

He can feel a pleasant ache in the muscles of his back – he has walked almost any distance, but ridden a horse only a few times – and tiredness again. Normally both would vanish the moment he felt them, a miracle so automatic he forgets he does it, but it’s not disagreeable, and there is nowhere he needs to be.

Instead he lets this body drag him down again into heavy, drugging sleep.

He wakes with the dawn, wisps of something – dreams or memories – still clinging. He held the stars in his hands, spun them from nothing, tiny sparks a thousand million miles wide, and his wings stretched out and out into the infinity of the sky.

There are places out there, he knows (suddenly but not suddenly, because he always knew, he just forgot) with air and water and light. And it would be so easy, if he were still an angel. He could wrap the humans up in his angelic grace, take them away and hide them.

..and that would at least be a better reason to fall.

The unicorn nuzzles him, thirsty and hungry. He makes a little oasis, a bucketful of grain, a pond of deep clear water, a cairn of rocks that shelters it in the hottest part of the day. Tall enough to attract the attention of anyone else passing this way.

By the time anyone ever does Hell will have forgotten it was one of his. They would prefer him to be killing people.

He’s not – really – quite sure what Hell has against the human race. Oh Crawly likes to tease them, make them misbehave, but that’s more like daring a little brother to do something naughty. A drop of jealousy in it, but a wobbly sort of pride as well. Even before - even in the garden – it was only his own dissatisfaction he had poured into Eve’s ears.. ‘Why should you not taste, why should you not know..’

It’s not like the humans wilfully usurped them. Crawly remembers the fall all too distinctly. Humanity had not even been thought of.

He’s a funny sort of demon, isn’t he? He knows downstairs are suspicious. He’s beginning to believe he was a funny sort of angel too. At least Hell is easier to lie to. It’s practically in the job description.

It’s easier to get up on the bare back of the unicorn this time, unworried about where they are going or what he thinks he’s doing. Time has settled into something comfortable. A pattern of days and nights, dreams and thoughts he doesn’t have to share with anyone.

Doesn’t have to pretend resentment or wickedness or humanity or anything else. Can’t, in fact, because he’d only be pretending to himself (not that he’s above a bit of that, when its useful. if you can fool yourself you can fool anyone, right?)

He stops before sundown the next night, strips to the skin and slips into today’s pool – not one of his this time, a warm thing that he suspects sits over a volcanic vent, tainted with smoke and sulphur. The unicorn won’t touch it, so he provides water in a bucket, and grain after, letting his body dry in the air as he gathers a few twigs to make a fire, huddling himself in his robe before the flames he will make last the night, watching them dance. 

He combs his hair through with his fingers, working out the knots as it dries, firelight glinting through it.

There was a time he thought he’d never be warm again. Another when he never thought he’d stop burning. There are shapes in the flames, wings and palaces and the tongue of a snake. He sticks his own tongue out and hisses softly, laughs at himself just as softly. Wishes, for a moment, that the angel was here to laugh at him too.

But the angel is off doing good. Or at least, as much good as the almighty will allow. Because kindness is not the same as goodness apparently, and although he’s not – cannot be – kind himself, Crawly can taste the wrongness of that on his tongue. 

He doesn’t sleep that night, just watches the flames leap and the glow of the stars, and the sun rise in the east.

Angel of the eastern gate, he thinks suddenly. What was your task? Defend the gate, the tree, or them? Did you fail or succeed in it?

What was my task, he wonders, but he cannot remember his task, or his name, or what he looked like (if he ever knew. vanity was not encouraged. Besides it’s not that easy to catch a glimpse of himself even now, the occasional pool of very clear water, the shining blade of a sword. The angel’s eyes.)

He only knows who he is now, with a name chosen mostly at random because he needed something to give to the angel. He thinks he might change it, actually. Nothing too flashy. (Flashy will come later, and he will love it, but it will be the slippery flashiness of style, not the overbearing nonsense of a name like Beelzebub or Demogorgon). After all it’s his to change.

On the ninth day there is a breath-taking sweep of sea, blue as anything he has ever seen, a valley running far to the right of him, lush, verdant. The unicorn turns his head that way, whinnies a little.

‘Go on then.’ The demon says, slipping off and into the water. It’s salt, and teeming with life. Fish, turtles. He floats without thought, dives and turns and rolls in the water.

He has never – cannot – fly in this body, but this feels like it would if he could. He comes out with his hair dripping, the taste of salt on his tongue and silky against his skin, feeling cool and languid.

He spreads his robe out on the sand to sleep, above where he can see the tide runs, and barely notices that what had seemed so odd at first is now something he does instinctively.

The unicorn is back in the morning, looking expectant. He grudgingly provides it with oats, but it doesn’t seem all that interested. Takes a few bites from what seems to be politeness and then nuzzles at him impatiently until he takes the hint and clambers up on its back. 

The expanse of the beach is so different to the rocky terrain around. Later, when racecourses are laid out on beaches, Crowley will remember this, the way the creature trots and then canters and then full on gallops towards the forest, the feel of the wind against his skin and in his hair, the splash of water and smell of salt, the sheer expanse of space and light. He laughs for the sheer joy of it.

The taste of the fruit on his tongue, tart and sweet, the texture in his mouth, so strange. Not unpleasant (the second bite is better than the first, the third better still, as his body recognises sustenance and demands satiation).

Now they are no longer travelling the unicorn loses interest, wanders back to the beach and canters about by itself, kicking up the sand and the surf.

They live in herds in the wild. Now all this one has is itself. It seems cruel.

‘Poor bloody unicorns. Poor bloody humans.’ He says aloud. ‘I mean what is the point?’

He picks another piece of fruit and slices through the heart of it to scoop out the flesh, cooler and sharper than the last. He doesn’t normally bother to eat when he’s alone, only began because humans instinctively distrust people who will not eat with them. It’s a social habit.

Demons are not, it occurs to him, designed to live in herds. They don’t have the empathy or the patience, they’re not bound together by tribal or family instincts or social rituals in the way that the humans seem to be. Probably angels aren’t either. What angels are filled with is heavenly certainty and the love of their creator. Perhaps that’s why, even with his ears still ringing from the shock of the fall, and not really able to remember heaven all that well, he had still felt surprised that the angel had been friendly.

Kind, as well as good.

Oh sod it all to..

.

.

.

..it’s still raining when he gets back, and has settled in for a long, long time. There aren’t so many people about, anymore. It’s shocking how little time it takes for humans to get hungry, to get tired. For disease to spread as a racking cough through these wasted bodies.

He does what he can. He can’t cure their illnesses, or promise that heaven won’t come after them. He can only open a door and lead them to the place he’s found, with it’s fruit and it’s fish and it’s warm sunlight in the day, and firewood for the night, and walk away.

And if Hell ever finds out, he’ll.. think of something.


End file.
